EPISODE 16

For me, Facebook is like crack.

I’m sure I’m not the only one because if I were Mark Zuckerberg wouldn’t have nearly as many friends and  there would be major international concern over the new neck disorder that everyone is suffering from that makes them incapable of holding up their own heads.

We all have our own reasons for blocking out everything around us in favor of the cyber connection. Mine is that, as a stay-at-homeschooling-mom, it is my window to the outside world. It is not exactly the real world but there are enough similarities to make it seem real, and enough of what we wish was real to make us like it better sometimes. I say ‘sometimes’ because we all know that there is nothing that can compare to a real connection with a real person who really cares about us. That “sometimes” is when we are looking for an escape which, after all, is what people use crack for, right?

Even as I write this I am switching back and forth to FB in another screen. Of course I am also changing diapers, giving baths, authorizing snacks, breaking up arguments and going through bedtime routines. I guess you could call me a multi-tasker (or “mom” for short). But, as with any other escape, it can quickly start to fill your thoughts until that is what you focus on and pretty soon you have a full-fledged addiction that inhibits your ability to do anything else well.

An addiction doesn’t need to be drugs or alcohol or sex or gambling or any of those widely recognized things that take over and destroy a person's life. It is anything that controls you instead of you controlling it. Money is a big one. T.V., Food, people-pleasing, even self-improvement can become something you serve in order to make yourself better than others or make you feel like you will be worth something eventually.

Unlike crack, most people don’t think of Facebook as harmful and in and of itself, it isn’t. There is nothing wrong with wanting to see pictures of my nephews as they grow or of my brother's new baby girl. There is nothing wrong with staying in touch with my mother who lives oh-so-very-far-away from me. There is something wrong with ignoring my family in order to stay up on everyone else's lives. There is something wrong with losing sleep so I can watch cat videos or gossip about the latest political scandal. So where do I draw the line?

My son told me today I need to stay away from screens for a while because I spend too much time in front of the computer instead of with them and this was hard to hear from my kid because I know there is truth to it. I spend countless hours with them every day in teaching them and feeding them and caring for them but I don’t play as much with them as I used to and that, I’m assuming, is what he meant. I make excuses. I’m feeling older (I know, 30 is not that old, but it starts now) my legs hurt at the end of every day. The floor is not as comfortable as it used to be. Playing pirates or batman or even sidewalk chalk is ten times harder with a baby on your hip. But I could make ways.. Go outside with them while the baby is napping, crawl in the fort and make up stories until my legs give up, watch their circus acts instead of the news feed on my phone... There are ways.

When I get to the place where I am up until 11pm on Facebook and then after finally going to bed I wake up in the morning (6 hours later) and check my Facebook before I even put my glasses on I know I have a problem. When i hear my kid asking me the same question 6 times without processing the information and responding I need to detox. Goodbye Facebook for a little while, I love real life more. We can be “friends” again when I can be responsible about it.

I sound like my mother. I am my mother in many ways. I guess she did something right… or brainwashed me, that’s always an option! Now i’m going to go tell my kids to stop running in the house, and that is not something we eat, and no he cannot use his brother for the put-this-apple-on-your-head-and-i-will-shoot-it-off experiment. I’ve learned responsibility and self-discipline and I must now go forcefully impart it to my children. It should only take 15 to 20 years… unless i figure out the whole brainwashing thing. I think I will go call my mom.

EPISODE 15

My daughter taught me a lesson today.

Every year in February we head to to local tax office to file. We don’t waste any time in putting in our taxes because we usually get a good return. Considering our regular monthly income it is nice to have enough money to pay all our bills and still have something left over for something slightly frivolous … like clothes or savings for a house or a new couch that isn’t just “new to us” but really new, no stains or anything! We might even go out to eat once or twice (or three times or four depending on how much our return is… it is one of my husband's favorite things to do).

All that said, we do tend to get a little slap-happy with a positive balance in our account and before we even get our W2s in the mail I have started writing lists of the things we need to spend the money on. I start out very responsible and list real needs:

Rent

Electric bill

Phone bill

Tithe

Car insurence

Gas

credit cards

House fund

Then I start thinking of less pressing, less expensive needs:

Soap

paper towels

batteries

tape

light bulbs

razors

stamps

then I start to lose track of necessity all together:

pampered chef order (what! I need a spatula and some new spoons. Who says I will order beyond that?)

Craft supplies (for school?)

game console (that’s my husband’s)

waffle iron

new bedding

This is where my lesson comes in. I was sitting on the couch after we had come home from church. I was talking with my husband about the return we were expecting and how we could pay off our credit cards and try to build up our credit score so we can someday use that house fund mentioned at the top of the list. In the middle of this I casually mentioned “Oh, We need a waffle iron.”

“We don’t need a waffle iron, Mom,” my nine year old said  “We want a waffle iron.”

Well shut my mouth! Turns out someone had learned in Sunday school about knowing the difference between wants and needs and I guess I was due for a reminder. She was right, I don’t need waffle iron, I want one - and looking at it in that light (you know, the light of truth) I can easily give over having one if I need to because I can say to myself “what do I want more, a waffle iron or that house we are saving for?” and the house always wins.

Sometimes I get into the thought pattern that says “it’s $30. what’s 30 bucks to $300,000? How could that even help or even be missed?” but that is nonsense. You can never reach $300,000 without first achieving $30 and then adding one more and one more and one more.

I think God is trying to teach me financial responsibility. It is not the easiest lesson I have ever learned, even if it is coming from my baby girl. Old habits die hard but with God’s help and occasional reminders from my children, I’m sure I will get it in the end.

EPISODE 14

Creative cruelty.

As a general rule cruelty is discouraged but you have to appreciate the creativity that an imaginative child can showcase while mistreating a sibling. For example; My daughter decided  she was ready to start her own town (“Stripe City”) where all her stuffed tigers could live.  She, as the mayor, set up a main street, produced a constitution and wrote an anthem. This town however did not have open borders and did not welcome just anyone into it’s elite collection of citizens. As laid out in the anthem:

          “Stripe city is really cool

           And we don’t allow in any fools”.

She then used this to tell her brother he was not welcome there.

I am not proud of this. I hope she is not either (which she may not be, considering the talk we had after found out). Through being corrected as she was (and, I’m sure, will be several times more in the future), my goal is that she will turn her powers to good instead of evil - because it is clearly evident that she does have a gifted mind. Most children do I think, if they are encouraged and nurtured and taught how to use their imaginations. Unfortunately, human nature does not predispose us to altruism, or others-centered goodness. Our natural reaction is to please ourselves at the expense of whoever we find useful. In children it can be anything from making themselves feel better by making someone else feel worse, or getting out of trouble by shifting the blame, to a joke in bad taste so they themselves can laugh. In adults it can be much uglier.

When I was a kid, I remember my big sister tying a friend to a tree and leaving him there until he cried. This was her “game” and she insisted, while she was getting in trouble for it, that it was all in fun. This same sister slipped an Ex-Lax into another kids food, told my second sister she was adopted, taught me how break into a sealed-off room without getting caught (which we tried and did get caught because we had to go out the window onto the roof - also her idea- and we got in major trouble because it wasn’t even our house). She also hung a roadkill racoon from the ceiling of a cafeteria, chased a bunch of screaming kids around with a raw turkey gizzard and nearly convinced a friend to dig up a dead horse. She was - and still is - very “gifted”.

The beauty of it is, now she uses her wonderful mind to do wonderful things. She is a marine biologist with the dream of opening a learning center for middle-school kids so she can teach them all about the oceans and how to care for them. She is brilliant and because she was taught to use those powers for good and how to care about others more than herself she will make a huge difference in the world and every life she touches will be better for it.

This is what I want for my children. They are brilliant… you can see it in the way they torture each other! You can also see it in the way the tell stories, remember lessons, put on plays, talk to children younger than themselves and children older than themselves and to adults and in the way they play pretend. But what is better is you can also see that they are learning to care for others. Their gifts are seen in how they take care of each other, how they give freely, how they treat their friends. There is still much learning to do but that is why they are children. If we teach our children this now, that much uglier adult version will not be around to torture the world.

EPISODE 13

We, as human beings, all crave change. For the rich it means a new car or summer home. For those on moderate income it means rearranging your furniture or searching craigslist for something new. For the sissies it means Burger King instead of Mickey D’s. For the brave it means stepping out of their comfort zone to pursue a greater calling. For the extreme it means moving far away, possibly to a place where they don't speak your language, to start all over again. For me it means bangs.

I have been toying with the idea of bangs for years now (there’s no need to rush change) but finally I got up the gumption to go through with it.

I was having a mom day... field trip, math work, arguing with kids… and was feeling the need to do something unusual that validated my existence as a person. I dont have the $80 to drop on a hairdresser and I needed something now so I told myself “I’ll just do it myself!” What’s the big deal? I’ve cut my daughter's hair, including bangs, a dozen times and it has come out great so I can handle this.

With my three year-old in the tub, looking on, I took off my glasses and moved in closer to the bathroom mirror. Little bits of water drip down my face from the portion of hair I had measured out to cut. With my little safety, craft scissors I steadied my hand and tried not to think about the risk I was taking (I’m a real adrenalin junky at heart). If I could have closed my eyes and still done a good job I would have. In retrospect perhaps I should have closed my eyes… The first cut was fine, the second cut was ok, the thir… Oh Crap!!

The Good and the Bad and the Ugly truth:

The Good. Bangs make me look a bit like my sister (she is very pretty).

The Bad. I look like my sister’s three year-old was the one holding the scissors and the resulting bang’s were his attempt at making me look like his mom. Have you ever seen a kids drawing of their mom? It’s that good.

The Ugly truth. After a few moments I went down stairs (there wasn’t anything I could do but wait until it grew out and I couldn’t spend that 3 weeks hiding in the bathroom). In the living room my daughter was sitting on the couch and when I walked into the room she looked up and her eyes went right to my poorly hidden forehead. She smirked. She smiled. she asked “did you cut your hair”?. Then bounding and bouncing across the room she passionately implored “can you do mine like yours?!?! I want bangs too! Please can you do mine too?!?!”

We don’t make great decisions when we are working off of our emotions. Even things that might be good and would work out well if done with proper consideration and a measure of patience, can really take a turn for the worse when we do it in a desperate moment of emotional climax. And then there are the things that would never be a good choice that we do because we are “following our hearts” or responding to a way we feel instead of listening to wisdom.

Then we have to deal with the effects of our choice: the bad hair cut, the indigestion, the empty bank account, the alienated friendship or the ill-suited significant other that hurts us more than helps us. Our choices affect how our days and months and years and life turn out. Paying attention to the “why” of our decisions and making sure it is not driven only by how we feel at the moment is a good step towards wiser choices.

Now comes the ugly truth. We are not the only ones who are affected by our choices. There are always other people who will be impacted by the things we do. People who look up to us and want to be like us, people who love us and are hurt by thoughtless words, people who can’t make their bills because we didn’t pay ours. . . .  Even as simple as those poor people who have to share a bed with us after we ate that food that we know gives us gas (and that’s no joke… I have a husband who loves chili!)      

I’ll get over my haircut (in a few weeks when I stop looking like 13 year-old Leonardo DiCaprio) and out of love for my daughter I will not make her share in my humiliation (a pre-planned and well executed set of bangs might, however, be in order for her). But most importantly I will learn from my mistake as I hope we all will strive to do.  I may be competent with a pair of scissors when it comes to my kids hair but it takes a person with a special skill set to cut their own hair. I don’t have that skill set. Lesson learned.

EPISODE 12

“That moment when…”

This is a phrase I have been seeing pop up on social media a lot lately and I am discovering you can have a ton of fun with it. You can finish it so many amazing ways that tell an entire story in just a few epic words.

Allow me to demonstrate:

“That moment when you gotta go really bad but think you can hold it just a little longer so you can finish what you are … oops, I guess I can’t… and now you have to stop what you are doing and clean up a mess.”

You see what I mean?

“That moment when you take a drink of orange juice thinking it is milk.”

- everyone say it with me “GGLAAUUGCK!!!”

Or how about

“That moment when your 7yo and 9yo make it all the way to midnight to welcome in the new year and you conk out by 11 like a chump cuz you just can’t keep your eyes open any longer.”

Now you’ve got every other parent nodding their heads and saying “the struggle is real!”

“That moment when you see someone you know and have an entire conversation with them all the while trying to remember how you know them and what their name is.”

“That moment when you fall right in front of the person you were trying to impress.”

“That moment when you go on Youtube for a minute to watch a music video and five hours later you find yourself watching a tutorial on how to talk to a giraffe.”

“That moment when you get out of the shower and the only towel you have to dry with is paper towel.”

“That moment when you answer the door for the pizza guy and he makes a face at you like you are a crazy person because earlier when you thought you had wiped off your makeup you had in fact only smeared it all around your face making yourself look like the Joker.”

You see what I mean? All you need is one sentence and whoever reads it is right there with you laughing and saying “That’s Awesome!”

This last one is one I got from a friends’ FB profile… What I want to know is how come no one this woman lives with told her she had lipstick all over her face? Then again… would I have told her?  Would your friends and family let you answer the door with it still there? If they would you should thank them… and then return the favor. Make sure to have a camera around.

EPISODE 7 - 11

So I keep starting to write down things for different episodes but never get much further than the first couple of paragraphs. It is all stuff that strikes me as great “let’s laugh at ourselves and learn something” material but I can’t seem to fill a whole page with it and still keep it interesting.

At first I thought I would just scrap it all but it was good stuff … Stuff like I went to the dentist the other day and they crammed 18 cups of green playdough into my mouth and then tried to start a conversation with me (didn’t their mothers ever teach them not to talk with their mouths full? Or what about not eating playdough?!? For people who supposedly went to college for 6 years and got a medical degree they don’t seem to have mastered the basics that the rest of us picked up in preschool.)

There was also the phone call I got from a friend who was standing, buck naked, in the middle of her kitchen trying to cook for a fast approaching family event but couldn’t because her baby was having a hunger meltdown. She was naked because the meltdown started on her way into the shower (which she never got by the way) and by the time she had gotten the baby calmed enough to feed him she only had a few minutes to cook for the party. I didn’t think that was the right time to remind her of her statement she made before she had the baby, comparing dog ownership to parenthood.

There was also something about having Thanksgiving with my Chilean and Puerto Rican  in-laws. It went well and I had fun. My father-in-law said the blessing in Spanish and even though I didn’t know exactly what he said, God did and that’s who he was talking to, so it’s all good. We did have turkey and I made bread and pie but the rest of the food was was a little less traditional than I was used too. We had arroz con pernil y flan… Look it up.

Then of course, there is my husband’s hair cut. I might have been able to fill up a whole page on this topic. He has about 2 weeks of decent looking hair right in between “bad” and “awful”, after which it moves right on to straight-up creepy. He usually cuts his own hair with clippers and leaves barely a stubble field making him look something like Curly from The Three Stooges. After it grows a little, it doesn’t look too bad - but it quickly passes that stage and into what we call, the “Chia-Pat” stage, all poofy on top and everywhere. Then it grows a little more and enters the “Lord of the Rings villain” stage and there it stays until he shaves again, like he is preparing for brain surgery.

There was one time when he got a legit cut from a barber, but unfortunately, he got it done on Christmas day - which means that the only barber shops open were either Jewish or Asian. We knew right off the bat, when he got home, where he had gone. He walked around with a very nice Vietnamese haircut on his Hispanic head until it grew out.

I started a paragraph or so about the day I first found that I fit into mom-jeans and how I had bought them because not only did they fit comfortably, but they looked pretty good too. I didn’t get very far with that one though because it is hard to write on paper that is wet with tears… it was more of a “let’s cry and learn” thing than a “let’s laugh and learn” thing. The only reason I am able to write about it now is because I am convinced that they are making mom-jeans better and more fashionable now…. that and I’m typing on a computer and if I hold my head back far enough the tears can’t ruin the keyboard.

Then inspiration struck when my husband told me I was just like his mother because I wanted the turkey leg.

First of all, fellas, I don’t think you should ever tell your girl that she is like your mom, or any other woman for that matter, unless that woman is someone she truly wants to emulate.

Don’t get me wrong; my mother-in-law and I get along pretty well, but our similarities are minimal and I would rather my husband appreciate me for me own qualities. Besides, the fact that we both want the turkey leg is as far as that similarity goes and it is really a rather superficial one because we want it for very different reasons. She actually likes the leg meat. I like looking like King Henry the 8th.

For the taste and texture value, I would rather eat the breast meat, but sitting there with my elbows on the table and a hunk of roasted meat still on the bone is  gloriously dramatic and comical. It is an opportunity that is too much for me to pass up.

My mother-in-law is not this way. She can be dramatic but not in a theatrical sense. She wants the leg because she prefers the dark meat - I don’t know if she actually likes it better but she always eats it - along with the gristle, skin, cartilage, those stringy tendon thingies and, occasionally, the bone. Never throw away anything. That would be wasteful.

I may not be able to fill the book with all this great material but there was at least enough for an episode. Little things like this are a wonderful glimpse of real life. Life is like the blooper reel from a really great movie (all you have to do is watch 10 minutes of AFV to see that). Simply because we are living human beings these things are part of our life and I think it is great! What with everything we deal with, we need it for comic relief. Life provides us with an opportunity to laugh nearly every day and we would be wise to find and enjoy it.

They say laughter is the best medicine so a little levity is just the thing, and what could be more convenient than being the center of the joke?

EPISODE 6

It is 7pm on a Wednesday night and the house is so quiet you can hear the clock ticking. Wednesday is my night off. My hero takes the all the kids to church except for the baby who is in bed and asleep by 6. I have the house to myself for about 3 hrs and it is heaven.

I would like to make a statement right now and say that I love what I do. Sometimes it sounds like I feel like taking care of my family is a drudging job that I can’t wait to clock out of, but it is not. It is my work but it is not my job. It isn’t even my career. Caring for my family is my art form. It is my Opus. My life’s work into which I invest my everything with all my heart and I love it. I think most parents can relate to this sentiment

That doesn’t make it any less challenging. It is a labor of love but labor nonetheless, and anything you do with so great an investment of self, of energy,emotion and passion is something you need to take a break from on occasion in order to do it your best. I would recommend a regular break if you can get it and frequent interaction with other adults while not on break. Artists tend to go crazy you know and these are great preventative measures to keep you out of the loony bin. You may even keep enough of your senses to come off as only a little strange but there is no harm there; we all have a little weirdness. Good things can come from losing your marbles though (you know, in case you can’t get that much of a break, which would not be shocking). Crazy people make great entertainment at parties.

But I digress. Back to my story...

I have the house to myself for 3+ hours. Usually I get a shower and then I can clean, sit, read, exercise, eat, watch a squishy movie, write or do whatever I want to do, but mainly I rest.

This time around, after my shower, I decide to make my bed and crawl in. The remainder of anything I do tonight will be done from a cozy, clean bedroom, under clean sheets and wrapped in a cocoon of fleece blankets.

It’s funny how even in a clean room the right kind of person can find something to trip over. And if nothing can be found, a simple improvisation is all you need. Just throw something on the floor (like the bed covers that need to come off in order to change the sheets) and you have yourself the happy opportunity to break your face (which I promptly did)

So I’m pulling off my blankets to make my bed and I find a decapitated lego man. I can’t help but think of that scene in “The Godfather" with the horse head in the sheets and I wonder if I will wake the next morning screaming because there is a lego head. But instead of it being in the sheets it must be surgically removed from my spine because I slept on it all night and now it is firmly in place as a new part of my body.  As far as I can see, this whole body peircing thing is a rip off. All you have to do is sleep on a lego all night and Voila! A new accessory in a fashionable shade of yellow!

I’m not sure there is a profound lesson to be learned from this story but if I discover one I will let you know and henceforth it will be know as “the lego-head lesson”.